- Author
-
Civil Engineering Research Foundation
- Title
- Partnership for the Advancement of Infrastructure and Its Renewal Through Innovative Technologies (PAIR) White Paper.
- Coporate
- Civil Engineering Research Foundation, Washington, DC
- Sponsor
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
-
NIST GCR 98-765
September 1998
24 p.
- Distribution
- AVAILABLE FROM National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Springfield, VA 22161. Telephone: 1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000; Fax: 703-605-6900. Website: http://www.ntis.gov INFORMATION ON PAIR contact: The Civil Engineering Research Foundation (PAIR Secretariat), 1015 15th Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20005. Telephone: 202-842-0555. Fax: 202-789-2943. Website: www.cerf.org. Email: [email protected]
- Keywords
-
infrastructure
- Identifiers
- Partnership for the Advancement of Infrastructure and its Renewal (PAIR)
- Abstract
- Each person and every business depends on the nation's infrastructure, but innovation in infrastructure is not always keeping pace with business innovation and market demands and human needs. Modernizing and maintaining our infrastructure-by some estimates likely to require a more than $1.3 trillion investment-represent both a pressing national need and a tremendous market opportunity for innovative products and practices. Unless private sector businesses and government join in a collaborative effort to accelerate the pace of infrastructure innovation, America's 21st century businesses will be shackled by the high costs of an ineffective, decayed, inadequate, and obsolete infrastructure. Further, we will miss global market opportunities for developing new ideas, science, and technology to improve infrastructure. Yet we lack both broad public appreciation of the problems and opportunities, and solid constituency for infrastructure innovation that spans infrastructure's functional range: telecommunications, utilities, water supply and sewerage, transportation, and public facilities. Leaders from industry, non-government organizations, academia, and the public sector have come together to support and build this constituency. This initiative-which we have termed the Partnership for the Advancement of Infrastructure and its Renewal (PAIR)-seeks to accelerate product and process innovation in the construction, maintenance and repair of our nation's infrastructure. PAIR's basic premise is that all of us, in both the private and public sectors, are users of the infrastructure and therefore stakeholders in its advancement and renewal. Together we can motivate and shape collective action.